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About this quote

What does it mean?
Free trade is described as a practical tactic rather than a fixed moral rule.
In plain terms
Free trade is a useful tool not a strict rule.
What can you take from it?
Evaluate economic policies by results not dogma.

Where it applies

  • Economic debates
  • Policy making
  • Trade discussions

Putting it to work

  • Assess policy outcomes
  • Avoid ideological rigidity

Questions to consider

  • Should policy be flexible or rigid?
  • What principles guide your economy?

Another view

Some argue trade should be based on ethical principles.

More from Benjamin Disraeli

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  2. Consider Ireland. You have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the…

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  3. Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.

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